/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Mon Jan 1 01:31:09 2018 No.10476078 [Reply] [Original]

I need help with my bildungsroman portal fantasy:

It was an otherwise unremarkable day when two hundred dead horses washed up on the shore. Alongside them, half buried in the sand, was a single man. The horses had drowned and they could not be saved. But the man, he could be—in every way a man can be saved. Dad told me that story. It happened before we were born. I went down and visited the water once. Just to see it. I was drawn to it, I guess. The sand was still speckled with horse bones not yet stolen away by the tide. I had hoped to be saved, too. And maybe—I was.

Mother had taken another spill and she needed stitches. I don’t see her anymore. I see her face, and I see her leave the house once a week to cash her checks. But when I look into her eyes it’s like forecasting the weather on the moon. As distant as it is absent.

I knew something was wrong when I began to notice things out of place. Sheets hung from the ceiling fan, books inserted into the toaster, and Orion’s stuffed dinosaur deposited unceremoniously in the oven. Even my school lunch once contained a shoe in place of a sandwich. I knew it was her. When you died, Rose, some of her must’ve died too. I don’t know if it was father abandoning us, but if your death caused her to bend, then it was him leaving soon after that made her break.

After mother received five and a half stitches across her brow the nurse ushered us into a tiny doctor’s office. Time seemed to crawl as we sat beneath the quiet hum of fluorescent lights. Mother and I didn’t speak.

The man that entered wasn’t the operating doctor. He was a specialist. He smelled like the rest of the hospital—sterile, like disinfectant.

He smiled at me. A toothy smile that felt less than genuine. His teeth were large and white. They were as fake as his smile. As fake as his hairpiece. As fake as his tan. He was a symptom of a world around me that continued to feel less and less authentic. A place that once felt tangible, and real, and now felt so far away.

As he sat he laid a folder on the desk in front of him, sending out a clap as the paper displaced the air beneath it.

“You must be August,” he said. “I’m Dr. Summer.”

He smiled again.

I didn’t meet his gaze, instead, I turned to my mother. I studied my mother’s stitches. I knew things would only grow worse. I was worried what he might say about her.

“How old are you August?” asked Dr. Summer.

I turned to him. “I’m 14, I said.” I didn’t look it, not yet. I wasn’t remarkably tall. I wasn’t really remarkably anything. I had black rings beneath my eyes, a result of a long struggle with sleep that perfectly complemented a mess of unkempt black hair that fell over my forehead.

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